What does a baker do?
You turn flour and water into bread overnight, and almost everything you do is judged by hand rather than by a timer.
Also called: bread baker, craft baker, artisan baker.
A day looks like
- 1You start somewhere between one and four in the morning, because bread has to be ready when the shop opens.
- 2You feel the dough rather than look at the clock — the same recipe behaves differently in a cold week.
- 3You shape by hand, several hundred times, and the hundredth has to be as good as the first.
- 4You are finished and cleaning down while most people are having breakfast.
Hardest part
The hours. You are asleep when your friends are out and awake when they are not, and bread does not care that it is Christmas or that you are tired.
Best part
Tapping the bottom of a loaf that has come out exactly right, and hearing it hollow.
How you actually become a baker
- At schoolNothing in particular. Willingness to get up at two in the morning is the real filter.
- TrainingApprenticeship or a bakery qualification, plus a long time watching somebody who is good.
- How longA year to be useful, three or four to run a bakery's production on your own.
- Your first jobTrainee baker — weighing, shaping and learning to read dough.
Frequently asked questions
- Why do bakers start in the middle of the night?
- Because bread takes hours that cannot be compressed, and it has to be on the shelf when the shop opens. The fermentation sets the timetable and everything else works backwards from it.
- Will machines take over baking?
- Industrial bread is already made by machine. Craft baking is different — judging dough by feel in changing conditions, and shaping by hand, is exactly the kind of work that has resisted automation, which is why small bakeries have grown rather than disappeared.
- Do you need qualifications?
- Not formally. Many bakers learn entirely on the job or through an apprenticeship. What it genuinely requires is turning up at two in the morning, consistently, for years.
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